[ad_1]
CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico—Fearing a humanitarian disaster, authorities in this Mexican city across the border from El Paso, Texas, opened the doors to two shelters to provide meals, hot showers and medical help to more than 1,000 migrants—mostly Nicaraguans—who arrived in a group last week.
Many had children in tow and temperatures were hovering around the freezing mark. They got a police escort to the refuge after some said they had been held for ransom by criminal gangs as they had made their way north.
Within hours, though, the migrants left the warm shelters and walked to the Rio Grande, which they crossed en masse. Their plan, they said: surrender to U.S. authorities and seek asylum.
“None of the migrants wanted to stay” in the relative safety of the shelters, said Enrique Valenzuela, head of Chihuahua state’s migration agency. “They said ‘thanks, but no thanks.’”
The group’s dash into Texas was part of a migrant surge across the border around El Paso, site of one in four attempted illegal border crossings in recent months, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data. Migrants have been rushing to cross in anticipation of a change in U.S. immigration policy, according to migrants, government officials and migrant protection groups.
A migrant sleeping near a Greyhound bus station in downtown El Paso, Texas.
A U.S. federal judge recently ordered the Biden administration to stop expelling migrants under Title 42, a health law first used by the Trump administration during the pandemic under which migrants who crossed the border illegally were immediately removed from the country.
The measure applied to migrants from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, but not from Nicaragua or Cuba. It started to be applied to Venezuelans in October.
On Monday, U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily extended the policy while the Supreme Court considers an emergency request from Republican-led states to keep Title 42 in place.
Thousands of migrants, including large groups from Nicaragua, have arrived in Ciudad Juárez in recent days as word spread on social media that U.S. authorities were preparing to take tougher measures to deter illegal crossings.
Migrants huddling together under blankets near a Greyhound bus station in downtown El Paso, where they have been sleeping in freezing temperatures.
Migrants—some of them small children—have been sleeping on the streets of El Paso.
U.S. officials are considering a move to expand a program for Venezuelan migrants seeking asylum to also include Nicaraguans, Cubans and Haitians. That would mean they would no longer be able to apply for asylum when crossing the border illegally. Washington is also weighing a measure that would make migrants who cross the border illegally subject to quick deportation unless they can pass a tougher initial asylum screening.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
Do you agree with the dismantling of Title 42? Why or why not? Join the conversation below.
U.S. authorities have warned that the end of the pandemic-era Title 42 could lead, at least initially, to a significant rise in border crossings. On Saturday, the city of El Paso declared a state of emergency. More than 36,000 migrants have been taken into custody in El Paso since Dec. 1, and about 20,000 people have been released into the community.
Mexico’s Foreign Minister
Marcelo Ebrard
met with U.S. officials in Washington, D.C. last week to discuss bilateral issues, but he has declined to comment on the dismantling of the pandemic-era policy.
Throughout the past week, more migrants continued to arrive in the narrow stretch between the river bank and the border fence. Wrapped in blankets, migrants lined up for almost half a mile as they waited to be processed by CBP officials.
“At night we lighted bonfires and we even burned the few clothes we had left to get more heat. A lot of people fainted from hypothermia,” said Johana Salinas, a migrant from the Nicaraguan capital Managua who joined the line with eight family members last week.
Groups of 50 people began to be allowed into the U.S., women and children first, said Ms. Salinas, who was among some 30 Nicaraguans who were on an El Paso corner a few yards from the bus station, many of them wrapped in white blankets with the American Red Cross logo.
In the line along the border fence, some residents and other migrants sold them coffee and pizza slices from a nearby Little Caesars. CBP officers gradually finished processing the migrants, and the line thinned out.
On Tuesday, dozens of Texas National Guard personnel and highway troopers were deployed along the banks of the Rio Grande near downtown El Paso. The narrow stretch where the migrants had lined up was obstructed by camouflaged Humvees parked along the river bank. Texas authorities also installed a concertina wire fence to block migrants from crossing the shallow river.
As migrants stood on the Mexican side, a National Guard member used a megaphone to tell them that it was illegal to cross and that they should go to a nearby international bridge. The bridge has been closed to asylum seekers since early 2020.
Texas used a similar tactic in the Del Rio sector last year after thousands of Haitian migrants crossed the Rio Grande and formed a makeshift camp while waiting to be processed by U.S. authorities.
Román Domínguez, a pastor who runs a migrant shelter in Ciudad Juárez.
Mexican authorities and workers of international organizations are bracing for further arrivals in Ciudad Juárez.
Volunteers and charity workers say shelters are already at full capacity with thousands of stranded migrants, many of them Venezuelans, with nowhere to go.
“There’s a risk of chaos, in part because neither the municipal, state nor Mexico’s federal government have the tools to handle a situation of this type. But we are going to face it with what we have, preparing for the worst and hoping for the best,” said Román Domínguez, an affable evangelical pastor who runs the Migrant Oasis, a ramshackle shelter with more than 80 migrants inside a partially built house.
A migrant cooking for her children at the Migrant Oasis shelter in Mexico.
Migrant children coloring Christmas trees at a shelter in Ciudad Juárez.
Nicaraguan migrants say they fear that things could change for them. At present, Nicaraguans can’t be deported because the government of President
Daniel Ortega
refuses to take them back as a political crackdown by his authoritarian regime intensifies.
“Good timing to get into the U.S. doesn’t exist. The reality is that our government squeezes us so much that you have no choice but to leave empty-handed and leave your family behind,” said Víctor Vanegas, a pork seller from León, Nicaragua’s second-largest city.
Mr. Vanegas said he stood in line for 29 hours along El Paso’s border fence before being allowed into the U.S. last week. Before then, several hundred of the migrants were held for hours by a criminal gang which released them after they paid a ransom, Mr. Vanegas added. The incident was confirmed by Mexican authorities.
“I think the U.S. will soon close the stream for everyone,” said Ricardo Castillo, a former Venezuelan police detective who abandoned his job and left the country earlier this year. He watched the long migrant line from the Mexican bank of the river, knowing that Venezuelans wouldn’t be allowed in by U.S. authorities.
“Every day I come here to gain strength,” he said. “When Title 42 expires, let whatever happens be God’s will.”
Some migrants who arrived in the U.S. relied on white blankets with the American Red Cross logo for warmth in El Paso.
—Alicia A. Caldwell contributed to this article.
Write to Santiago Pérez at santiago.perez@wsj.com
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
[ad_2]
